Up Against The Wall – Psych Mix Part 1

I’ve been promising a psych mix for ages and here it is, but it goes deep and dark, to the Spirit of 68 in Paris and Chicago, to Blake’s Urizen, admirer of Blake Ginsberg with his capitalist Moloch Howl, Mexico 68 Olympics and the rise of Trump and his Mexican Wall, the corrupt DNC to war and eventual apocalypse.

Coming of the One, The Arrival of the End of the World, Strange New World – the cycle continues. Yep, this isn’t your usual mix – I started with the floaty Garden of Eden stuff but it didn’t reflect my extreme terror at what’s going on in 2016, nor my current circumstances. I didn’t edit this mix to tone it down at all, as a document, not all of it comes from that period, nor would be officially psychedelic rock, freakbeat or freak folk, but I think the spirit is there, from Russian early electronica, soul to Moondog’s drone music and poems to more recent tracks from Gnarls Barkley,King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and The Insects.

I included the “Satanic Mass” not for accuracy, not a Satanist but pretty sure that’s a bizarre Dennis Wheatley idea (saying the Lord’s Prayer in reverse? Really? And narrated by the label owner I think which makes it sound more like a radio commercial or ‘dramatic’ play) but it made me giggle. As do a lot of the supposedly ‘scary’ Apocalyptic tracks. My dark humour, can’t blame them for trying, but…KISS THIS GOAT! But I think the Arrival section is a pretty good journey through hell, there were some pretty odd occult psych tracks, some of which were pretty hair-raising and definitely apocalyptic.

And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

The name “Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers” is from a poem by Amiri Baraka aka LeRoi Jones, and became the name of an anarchist group that the Fugs joined in exorcising the Pentagon (Out Demons Out) which Edgar Broughton Band covered. You see it’s all linked.

I feel that we need to look to the post-Garden/Summer of Love times of 1968-1972 to make sense and make plans about what’s happening now. As you can hear from these songs, there’s not much difference between then and now, and if the world keep shifting right and President Trump becomes a possibility, you need to be ready. And Psychedelic wasn’t just about dropping out; although musically sometimes it seems less radical than what was going on politically – I hard to search hard and deep for poltical and deeper meaning, hence no MC5 in this mix (off stage: highly political, on-stage and on-record disappointingly staid despite one infamous swear, but by then even Jefferson Airplane was swearing on their records AND the Dick Cavett Show!).

Even Timothy Leary changed his famous phrase quickly to ‘Drop out. Turn on. Drop in.’ because it promoted apathy. Deviants, Fugs, Pink Fairies, David Peel, even ‘Airplane in 1968-69 were part of the underground counter-culture where the fields weren’t Strawberry and floaty nursery rhyme juvenilia was replaced by a proto-punk awareness of the street and harder music, harder drugs, harder life. Even I’d argue Can was part of this, certainly a harder, industrial yet psychedelic nature to their music. And in Germany, UK and the States, terrorists and activists mixed with musicians and drug dealers, a band could be a cult, a terrorist organisation, a front for drugs, political party or none of those…But in those circles much of it a critique of the state of the world, anti-capitalist, anti-conformity, pro-women, pro-queer, pro-black. It ended messily, but it was much more radical than the Hippy Communes and kaftans would suggest.

BTW the cover is inspired by and looted from famous Paris ’68 Atelier Populaire posters which I am a big fan of, especially at the moment I seem to be going back to screen-printing (can you believe someone is selling their version of the Populaire typeface? Oh the irony. La Lutte Continue!). Mixed in is Urizen from William Blake’s “The Human Abstract”, which as well as inspiring the much-sampled David Axelrod track is well worth a read.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea
Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain